No matter how much sin has come to control our lives, one thing is certain: God loves us even in this state. We do not have to first get our act together in order to be accepted by God. We only have to accept God's acceptance of us to know the truth that sets us free. There is "work" to do as we continue to let go and let God, but this practice does not merit for us God's love and grace.

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Focus: Accepting God's Acceptance

Scripture Readings

A. Psalm 139: 1-18

B. Romans 8: 31-39

C. John 8: 1-11

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End of day:
You are past the halfway point in the retreat. What might you do to help deepen your openness to God in the days to come?

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A meditation:

No contemplation and fruition of love, whether intellectual or affective, is more useful, more perfect and more satisfying than that which is of God himself, the Creator, our supreme and true Good, from whom, through whom and to whom are all things. He is infinitely satisfying both to himself and to all others, who contains within himself in absolute simplicity and from all eternity the perfection of all things, in whom there is nothing which is not himself, before whom and through whom remain the causes of all things impermanent, and in whom dwell the unchanging origins of all changing things, while even the eternal reasons of all temporal things, rational and irrational, abide in him. He brings everything to completion, and fills all things, in general and in particular, completely and essentially with himself. He is more intimately and more really present to everything by his being than each thing is to itself, for in him all things are united together, and live in him eternally.
- St. Albert the Great, On Cleaving to God, Chapter 9.)